The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.

One's life has many compartments.

The weasel under the cocktail cabinet.

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

When you lead a life of scholarship you can't be bothered with the humorous realities, you know, tits, that kind of thing.

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.